The shoes, for example, sneakers, etc. are equipped with a shoestring tied in a zigzag shape, thus allowing the shoes to tightly fit to a user's foot size. The tight fitting between the shoes and the user's feet can be improved by pulling and tightening the shoestrings, whereby a convenient walking can be achieved.
However, for the elementary school students of lower grades or kids before the elementary school or senior citizens, the loosening and tightening procedures of the shoestrings are not easy. For athletes and ordinary persons who do exercises, for example, a mounting climbing and a cycle racing, if both ends or a knotted portion of the shoestring are not fixed and untied when it is caught through an intense action or by an external thing, a racing record may be lowered, and an accident may occur, thus causing an undesired result. For this reason, the shoestrings should not be untied. Moreover, the tightly tied shoestrings should be easily untied when the user takes a rest after exercise for the sake of effective relaxation. Most preferably, the shoestrings should be easily tied, and at the same time, the tied states should be maintained in place, and the tied shoestrings should be easily loosened, if necessary.
A variety of devices are developed, which are able to easily tighten the shoestrings, thus facilitating the tightening and loosening of the shoestrings the procedures of which are opposite. The applicant of the present invention has an invention with the Korean patent NO. 953398 entitled “a device for tightening shoestrings using a ratchet gear”.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view illustrating a shoe equipped with a shoestring tightening device, and FIG. 2 is a disassembled perspective view illustrating a conventional device for tightening shoestrings.
As illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2, the conventional shoestring tightening device 10 is provided at a shoe tongue (T), wherein when a rotation cover 51 is rotated, an intermediate member 53 and a winding member 55 are engaged and rotate together. The shoestring (L) is wound around the winding member, and a shape-fitting restriction part 53z of the intermediate member is restricted by a one-direction latch gear 57c of a housing 57, so the rotation thereof is limited, not rotating in the opposite direction.
If the rotation cover 51 is pulled upward, an engaging shoulder part 123 of a rotary shaft 61 may move upward while resiliently pressing and splitting a resilient means 59, by which the intermediate member 53 can move upward. In this way, the engaged state between the intermediate member 53 and the winding member 55 is eliminated, after which the winding member 55 can freely rotate. Consequently, the shoestrings (L) can be pulled and loosened.
For this operation, it needs to separately manufacture a resilient means 59 which is made of a metal and is configured in a U-shape and should be assembled to a shoestring tightening device 10 through a complicated assembling procedure.
Moreover, the aforementioned shoestring tightening device 10 may have a problem wherein if the rotation cover 51 is pulled upward so as to untie the shoestring, the product may have an error if the resilient means 59 separates out of its original position. For this reason, the durability and reliability of the product may be degraded. If the lower structure of the housing 57 to which the resilient means 59 is engaged, is transformed complicated in an effort to resolve such problems, the whole configuration may become complicated, and the number of necessary components may increase, whereby the productivity of the product may be degraded.